Burnt
The movie poster for Burnt makes it look like Bradley Cooper started his own cooking show or something ... but this is actually a movie? You mean Jamie Oliver isn’t dramatic or funny enough? Guess not, but why would someone watch an actor pretend to cook while television is already saturated with real chefs cooking real good-looking grub? Surely it must be the ultra-innovative plot of a mercurial, foul-mouthed chef seeking redemption after falling out of grace by orchestrating the ultimate comeback — in this case, earning three Michelin stars. Yeah, there’s plenty of culinary eye candy to look at with Master Chef presenter Marcus Wareing as kitchen adviser and menu designer, but the most important question is ... can Cooper actually cook? Turns out, in preparation for the movie, he trained with Claire Smythe, executive chef of London’s Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, which, you guessed it, has three Michelin stars. The man did his homework. Give him a break.
A Walk in the Woods
Seems like there’s a movie based on a book every week. This time it’s author Bill Bryson’s humorous travelogue of the same name, written upon his return to the US after 20 years in the UK. Bryson decides to reconnect with his homeland by taking on the Appalachian Trail with his overweight, recovering alcoholic high school friend Stephen Katz, with whom he had backpacked in Europe in the 1970s. Unfortunately, they aren’t very prepared nor in shape, and the book pokes fun at their woes while educating the reader about the trail. Bryson and Katz were in their 40s when they took the trip, yet the film casts 79-year-old Robert Redford and 74-year-old Nick Nolte as the duo, presumably because out-of-shape geezers are much funnier than out-of-shape middle-aged men. It’ll take quite a bit of mastery to make such a sublime, light-hearted slice-of-life book into feature-film material, and it’ll be interesting see how romcom hitmaker Ken Kwapis handles it.
Straight Outta Compton
City of Compton, City of Compton… guess what this movie is about? Yes, that legendary hip-hop group, NWA. The title refers to the group’s 1988 album, which brought gangsta rap to the public consciousness, though they would have preferred the term “reality rap.” Director Gary Gray launched his career directing videos for NWA member Ice Cube, and is probably best known for the stoners-in-the-hood comedy Friday, also featuring Ice Cube. Speaking of Ice Cube, that’s his son playing him in Straight Outta Compton. The story follows the genesis of the group in the violent streets of Los Angeles and their rise to fame, and also touches on themes of race and police brutality, which are still hot topics in the US almost three decades later. The trailer shows all the traits of an epic biopic and promises fast-paced and energetic entertainment, and while the dialogue may be a little cheesy, the beats are good.
Sicario
Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro star as FBI agents in this Mexican drug thriller, and when you have US agents trying to stop the cartels, as in reality, things get messy and twisted. Evidence: “What’s our objective?” Blunt asks her boss, played by Josh Brolin. “To dramatically overreact,” he replies. Directed by French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve, this seems to be intense stuff as the trailer opens with Blunt’s character raiding a house to find dozens of rotting corpses hidden in the walls. She is then recruited to help nab the “men who are responsible,” but things get murky from the get go as they cross straight into Mexico. Del Toro is the grizzled and cynical silent-type counterpart to Blunt who is in on all the shadiness and will do anything to get the job done. Sicario means “hitman” in Spanish, but this looks like it’s going to be way more complicated than just identifying a target and taking him or her out.
Marshland
Marshland pretty much swept the Goya Awards in February, which basically means that it is by consensus the best Spanish film of last year. Critics say that it’s basically the Spanish version of the acclaimed HBO series True Detective, but there’s nothing wrong with that, as we can very much afford to have more productions of that caliber. Set in the swamps of Andalucia, the film is set in 1980, five years after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, and follows two mismatched homicide detectives with different personalities and political ideologies as they investigate a series of murders of two teenage sisters in a middle-of-nowhere town with its dark secrets. It’s gritty and brooding modern noir like its American counterpart, but feels just a bit more intense and fast paced.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s